Where Do I Go From Here?
by NocturnalAntihero
Summary: Some years after the graduation from Hogwarts. After a career-ending injury, Harry is forced to sit and watch while his friends' success grows. When will he reach the breaking point- and what will it be?
1. Prologue

Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling's characters aren't mine. And I do not own London.

A/N: Because I have limited internet access, please be patient with the rate of updates. Thanks.

After graduating from Hogwarts, Harry Potter was immediately drafted onto London's premire quidditch team. He led them to two consecutive World Cup wins before a terrible accident which nearly took his life cost him his place as Seeker. Wizards all over England mourned his loss as they would the loss of their magic, and demanded the highest possible punishment for the driver of the flying carpet which had lost them their greatest Seeker in decades (Which the Ministry was happy to do, because not only was the twit driving an illegial object, but he was extremely drunk on butterbeer).

Meanwhile, two years after graduating from Hogwarts, Hermione Granger had a job within the Ministry for Muggle Relations, and was well on her way to becoming the Minister of Magic (the _Daily Prophet_ predicted four more years until she reached the top).

Ron Weasley, after graduation, had pursued certification as a Professor of Transfiguration, and following Professor McGonagall's acsension to Headmistress had been hired to take her place. (Dumbledore had stepped down at the end of the previous year, and had retired to a promintent post on the school's Board of Govenors. He still lived on the grounds, partially because he had had no other home for so long, but also because McGonagall though he was insane to step down, and flat out wouldn't let him leave.)

After Harry's accident, he retired to a hole in the wall (magicked so that it looked like a proper flat). When they heard about Harry's change in living arrangements, Hermione and Ron kidnapped him (well...not quite kidnapped...rather... took him out to lunch and...didn't let him go home...) and invited him to live in the flat that Hermione claimed she and Ron had been living in for the past two years (when in fact the lease had just been settled that morning). To their relief, he accepted their invitation.

As we join their story, it is the November after Ron began working at Hogwarts. The three have been living in the flat since the previous July. Together they watched England's standings plummet after a series of losses against teams who no witch or wizard had ever heard of. In wake of this humiliation, and of his friends' success, Harry wallows deeper and deeper into a pit of his own misery, and finds whiskey to be a comforting, if not constant, companion. Both Ron and Hermione are watching his decline with ever increasing worry, but have no idea what they can to do bring Harry to his senses.


	2. The Confrontation

A/N Sorry that it's taken me so long to get chapter one up...hope it's worth the wait..R&R, bitte!

All was silent at the breakfast table that morning. Harry kept his eyes resolutely glued to his fingers twiddling the bottle in his hands, for any glace upward would be met with either Ron's badly masked concern or the tears that stood behind Herimione's eyes, just waiting to fall. They had had another fight the night before, the result of which had sent Hermione to Ron's arms in tears and Harry to his room to seek comfort in his liquid friends...sometimes, he thought, the only friends he had left. The only friends he wanted to have left.

Fights with Hermione were becoming more and more common (by common, they were at each other's throats nearly three times a week), and they tended to centre on one theme. Hermione couldn't stand that Harry was letting himself go to waste so, and the pressure that her job put on her, combined with her incapability to sit by and watch Harry, made her nitpick at him constantly. Harry, however, was much more combative than Hermione, and usually won these arguments (although to be fair intimidation was not always ruled out of the game), and by this point most of Ron's shirts had tear stains on them.

This is not to say that Ron just sat by and watched Harry ruin himself, but he was able to choose his battles much more carefully. After Hermione sprung from the table without a word and slammed the door behind her, Ron wasted not a second in starting in on Harry.

"Why do you do this to yourself?"

"Do what?" Harry kept his eyes resolutely on the bottle.

Ron's laugh had no humor in it. "Do you honestly need to ask? Are you blind as well as stupid? Do you mean to tell me that you can't see what you're doing to Hermione, that you can't see what you're staring at this very second, that-" He was cut off be Harry slamming the bottle down on the table and standing up. He stalked behind the counter in the kitchen and simply stood there for a moment with his back to the breakfast table, to Ron's questions.

Harry ran his hand through his unruly black hair. His words were so quiet that Ron had to lean in to hear him: "Of course I see it...of course I see it...but don't you understand, that only makes it worse! To need to deal with your face, and Hermione's, and the questions, and this damn injury- there are things which I cannot let go of, Ron! I cannot let go of them because none of them- not the injury, not you, not Hermione- will let go of me!"

"Harry, I understand, but-"

"No, you don't understand! You sit there, Ron, in your three-piece suit, with your steady, well-paying job, as good as engaged- but I? I stand in ragged clothes, unable to keep a job, with concern weighing on my shoulders instead of love in my heart. How could you understand? HOW?"

All Ron could do was stare- for once he had been found speechless. Harry, with a look so plaintive and somehow at the same time so furious, saw the surprise that his tone had caused. And suddenly the weight of what he said hit him. How different his life truly had become from those of his friends. How little they were able to comprehend of the turmoil that raged inside him. And it had all become too much...simply too much...he just couldn't deal with it anymore.

Quietly without another glance at Ron Harry picked his wallet up off the counter and put it in his pocket. He slowly went to the door and put on his coat. As he left, Harry dimly thought he heard Ron ask where he was going, even get up to stop him. But everything was a dim blur, and Harry couldn't be stopped.

It was only after Harry reached the street that he realized he'd left his wand at home.


	3. The Bridge

He kept on walking.

Somehow walking the streets as a Muggle became a faint consolation. Here on the street he wasn't a failure. He wasn't the man who couldn't live up to his own legend. He wasn't the man who watched one of his best friends cry every morning. Here on the street he was just another face in the crowd. Here on the street he could deny who he was. Here on the street he could seek his death…no, more than that: he could die. Bit by bit, he could lose himself, lose his soul to the masses, and then what would be left to save? The shell of the man who had been the boy who lived- the worth of his own life nearly made Harry laugh. But he didn't laugh anymore. Not since the first night Hermione cried.

He wandered from pub to pub. Whenever he needed more money, he'd pick the pocket of the rich bastard who didn't know how damn good he had it sitting next to him. Harry wished- every time- that the rich bastard would catch him in the act, would call the police, would kill him, would do something that gave Harry any impression at all that his actions had a consequence. But none of them ever did. It was almost as though at the very moment Harry's hand reached for the pocket, another hand turned his victim's face away.

He'd lost count of how many bottles he'd drank by the time he walked out into the night. Did his fogged, alcohol-addled brain even realise that he had left his apartment when it was significantly lighter?

Dismissing the question as unimportant (read: requiring too much thought), he moved on. He wandered along the streets, not caring where he went or what he saw. Eventually his feet drew him to the river, and he walked along the path under the protection of the trees which lined it. When he came to the bridge, the fog in his mind began to clear, and he stepped reverently onto the bridge, as though he'd never walked along such a thing before.

At the peak of the arch, he turned to the railing. Wasn't the water calm tonight? He could see the full moon reflected in the water below him, the stars looked like sparks flying from it. _Ah,_ he thought, _the moon…radiant as Artemis, the very image of the darkness in us all…_The hole that had been growing inside him since the accident suddenly seemed more than a hole. It was a creature inside him, it was a disease that couldn't be fought, and it heard the siren call of its mistress. Harry climbed onto the railing.

How calm the water was tonight…

When he jumped, Harry didn't fall.

He didn't fall, he flew, and the arms clasped around his waist showed no signs of tiring. "I've been watching you," whispered a voice in his ear, "I've been waiting for you to call me." Her light Italian accent made him think of roses, of dark, bloodred roses blooming in the summer and with their sweet scent carrying him to a place that he could never find himself…

"Are you an angel?" He whispered. A lock of her blonde hair brushed his cheek; he couldn't see her face, but he could feel her smile. A seductive, Mona Lisa smile…

"No," she whispered. "I am a creature of the night. I am one through whom the Dark Blood runs. You called to me; you jumped into my arms…"

Harry turned his head; he wanted to see this 'creature of the night,' as she called herself. He looked into her face, and his breath caught in his throat. Skin white as alabaster, lips a deeper red than the roses which her voice reminded him of, loose blonde hair fluttering as they flew. Her face was as serene as Boticelli's Venus, as secretive as diVinci's Mona Lisa, and more beautiful than the two combined.

"…now you must be prepared to walk the path which you have chosen."


	4. The Alley

A rush of warm blood seeped into his mouth, and he slowly felt his faculty returning to him. Harry barely noticed his own hands held her wrist to his mouth, even less that the mysterious woman's hold on him had loosened. Had he noticed, the jar of hitting the ground as hard as he did might not have come as such a surprise. As it was, Harry groaned and writhed his aching body across the concrete, to stunned by has fall to care about anything except the fire that flew through his body. He convulsed with pain, clutching at his chest to relieve it, but the fire refused to be extinguised by his desperate homeopathic means. Harry wept, he shireked, he clawed, he writhed; every action was futile, but he could do no less and had not the capacity to do any more. Cool, feminine hands touched either side of his face, drawing him flat against the ground. The smell of roses filled his senses again, and he looked up into the eyes of this strangely beautiful woman.

For the first time he saw twin fangs in the corners of her smile.

By the time she had cleaned him and clothed him, dawn was fast approaching. Harry's vampiress took him by the hand and led him down a back alley to crouch behind a dumpster. She said nothing in response to Harry's questioning glare, rather indicated the people barely visible around the corner of their hideout. His vampiric eyes allowed Harry to see the man cornering his young prey against the wall in asounding clarity; he admired the glint of moolight that grazed the man's jawline, and how the moonlight and streetlight combined to accentuate the brightness of the woman's eyes and the natural blond-esque highlights of her dark hair. The folds of clothing playing in the weak light, how the touch of each person slid across the other- Harry could easily spend hours sitting there admiring the new sight afforded him, and vary well might have, had his vampiress not clutched his soulder and whispered the first words to him since first taking him from the bridge: _"Feed, my fledgeling..."_

At once the light altered once again, and some of Harry's sense returned to him. He was a broken man, but a man nonetheless, and would not- would not? he _could_ not- kill another of his kind. It still escaped him what strange magic this vampire had performed on him; why she had not killed him, and why his pain had not seemed to be caused he her were mysteries to Harry still. Yet she had told him to feed.

And named him her _fledgeling..._

_"Feed, my fledgeling..."_

Harry turned to this creature with a new horror in his eyes, and what he saw only built upon his fear: Her eyes had gone bright, but not bright like the tear-filled eyes of the woman, bright with excitement, bright like an animal ready for the kill. Harry tried to scramble up, but she still had him by the shoulder, and when she decided that they would advance upon the pair, none of his protests could deter her. The man had heard them, and when he turned to confront the interlopers, the vampiress shoved Harry at him.

Vampiric instinct took over.

Once the blood flooded into his mouth and Harry felt the warm, velvet liquid wash over his tongue and into his aching body, he lapsed into a state of calm, of staisfied pleasure. Despite all his previous high minded thoughts about the killing of men, Harry loved the feeling, and when it began to ebb, he deepend his kiss, eager to regain it. As the rhythym of the flow slowed, he felt a tug at the back of his head. When it slowed even more, the tugging became more insistent. The rhythym be damned! But when it had nearly stopped, his head was ripped from its cradle and the corpse crashed to the ground, greeted by the petrified shriek of its former companion.

"You must stop before the beating stops," she said. "Or you will drink the death with it, and nothing can revive you then." She glanced down to the body, and saw the blood spattered on his neck and stained upon his shirt. "One more thing," she whispered in his ear "drink neatly, please." She released him, and picked her way carefully to the girl, who seemed completely entranced by the elegant vampiress, and not in the least concerned that her death rode on the bloofer lady's shoulders. They entered into a passtionate embrace, which broke but minutes later when the life had flown from the girl's eyes, and the vampiress turned to show Harry the wound. "You see? Neat. No blood."


End file.
